Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone

Ten Ton Hammer: It seems a lot of people are getting burned out.

Salvatore: I don't blame anyone for that. I think of an MMO an awful lot like a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. After a couple of years, the characters are god-like, you can't rewind it, and maybe it's time to go on. Once I lose the sense of adventure, it's time to change the channel.

Ten Ton Hammer: Moving on to your current project and projects you've done before, how different is it for you to create a world where people can actually visually make your characters, like when you worked on Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone for Stormfront? How different was that for you, writing for that game compared to any of your books where *you* have a visualization of your characters compared to Stormfront or 38 Studios making that visualization for you? Does it make it easier or harder for you?

Salvatore: I think both, in different ways. Stormfront was really more of a learning experience for me. I mean, I was connected to the game and I wrote the story, but it had to fit into their size requirements and all the rest of it. Really, my involvement was minimal. I mean, I helped them create the characters, the history of the characters, and the story, but as a console game, what controlled that was the A.I. that they used. You had the ability to switch on the fly between any of the three characters, get new skill sets, and the AI of the other two would keep them moving along. It was really quite brilliant.

With 38 Studios, it's a very different experience because I'm creating the world, the races, and the history. I have a team working with me, and for me, so to speak. This is a ground up project. Every bit of it has my stamp on it. The art team, when they come up with a new concept, they come up to me asking, "What do you think? Does this fit?" So it's a very, very different experience.

Now it's harder because when I'm writing, even though I write so many books in a shared world, I don't like to be bound by other people. I like to be able to do what I want to do; what the story tells me to do. On the other hand, it's easier because I don't have to imagine every building, every dragon, and every monster.

When you're standing on the shoulders of giants, whether it's Ed Greenwood in the Forgotten Realms, or the artists like [Keith] Parkinson, [Larry] Elmore, [Clyde] Caldwell, and [Todd] Lockwood or the artists we have here at 38 Studios, they're giving *you* things that inspire you.

The hardest thing for me in developing a new world is that because it's an MMO, and I'm an MMO player, I understand something. I'm also a pretty good dungeon master by the way.

Ten Ton Hammer: *laughs*

Salvatore: The first thing you avoid is holding people by the hand and dragging them where you want them to go. When I'm writing a book, the characters that I write are the ones that you will live through for the story. In a game, an MMO, the character that matters is the one you create. If I did a Forgotten Realms MMO, you may like being able to interact with Elminster or Drizzt, but the bottom line is it's not their story, it's yours. And if it's not your story, then why are you playing? That's a hard adjustment.

Ten Ton Hammer: How are you changing things compared to other MMOs? In other current MMOs, you feel like the hero in the end, but at the same time there are some godlike characters in the world, like Thrall or the Lich King in World of Warcraft. You might end up killing them eventually, but at the same time, as a player, you still don't feel quite as powerful as these characters. Are you taking a different tact on that than other MMO's?

Salvatore: Yes. At the beginning of the MMO, certainly, you're going to see these characters. They're going to be impressive in their animations and their equipment and you know they'd kick your butt, but you're going to be one of them as our game goes along. I really can't get into too much detail about the way we're trying to let you tell your story in our world, but suffice it to say that paramount among it is the ability of players to influence their environment.

Ten Ton Hammer: Right. I gotcha. Initially when you started writing this world, was this something that you'd been thinking about prior to Curt [Schilling] coming up to you and saying, "I want to make an MMO and I want you to be a part of the studio?" Had you thought about doing that before Curt approached you?

Salvatore: Absolutely! Ever since I stepped into Norrath, I knew this was going to become the next big thing in storytelling, particularly in the fantasy genre, which translates so beautifully to the game format. I've wondered for 10 years now, what is the author’s role in this type of project? So I was mentally prepared to jump in and be part of a team that's exploring that.

Now the world itself, Curt and his friends had come up with some ideas that they really wanted to explore in an MMO. When they told me their story, I could see what they were missing. I knew what was missing. Instinctively, I knew where they were on target and where they were missing. So I took their idea and added one *huge* component to it and when I did, they all kind of looked at me and went, "Yeah!"